Emerging kiwi talent making small-screen videos on small budgets have their time to shine next Thursday night, with the finals of the 2009 Handle the Jandal music video competition.

Fifteen finalists will be screened at Wellington's historic Embassy Theatre this Thursday October 29, the only time homegrown music videos are shown in full cinematic scale.

This is the 11th Radio Active 89FM Handle the Jandal music video competition, which was initiated to promote emerging kiwi filmmakers to make videos for

New Zealand music. This year 133 entries were received, which was a good measure of success for the original intention of Handle the Jandal.

The fifteen finalists will compete for six technical categories and the overall winner, the Golden Jandal, awarded from the audience vote.

Handle the Jandal event director Hadden Morrison said there were two themes that were apparent in this year's crop of entries, produced under the spectre of economic recession: Nostalgia summer motifs and bunny rabbits.

“We’re really happy with the reception of Handle The Jandal this year," he said. "A record number of entries, the diversity of genres and shot selection – generally the quality of entries raised the bar again. The Animation and Cinematography categories will be fiercely competitive. A lot of first time entrants made the final this year which is also promising.

"There were two threads running through this years entries – bunny costuming and summer holidays. Summer holiday “nostalgia“ footage can make great videos but 40 videos with people in bunny outfits? WTF?"

The finalists will compete for a bulging bag of filmmaking goodies including services and equipment from Panavision, Sticky Pictures,

Portsmouth and Park Road Post. Handle the Jandal are well stoked with the support from Juice TV, Manky Chops, Kraft:Haus, Nektar, Spyglass and Hovering Lion.